Ahmadinejad: Iran is a nuclear state

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has produced its first highly enriched uranium, a day after he said that Israel must be finished off "once and for all."

Ahmadinejad announced Thursday the successful production of Iran’s first package of highly enriched uranium, two days after he ordered the processing to begin.

The president of the Islamic Republic told the country on live television Thursday that Iran had become a nuclear state. He added, however, that the country is not building nuclear weapons.

"We have the capability to enrich uranium more than 20 percent or 80 percent, but we don’t enrich [to this level] because we don’t need it," he said in the speech.

The announcement came a day after Ahmadinejad told Syrian President Bashar Assad in a phone conversation reported by Reuters citing Iran’s state broadcaster that "If the Zionist regime should repeat its mistakes and initiate a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all."

Meanwhile, the European Jewish Congress on Tuesday called on European and other members of the U.N. Security Council to immediately move toward applying "crippling sanctions" against Iran over its refusal to scale back its nuclear program.